The IEEE standards body is developing a metric for assessing the image quality of a mobile phone's camera, the organization said Monday.

IEEE P1858 will build on prior work, the CPIQ initiative of the International Imaging Industry Association (I3A), which was brought into the IEEE fold. Given the early stages of the process, however, IEEE executives said that a final specification will require about two years, with the specification's release in the summer of 2014.

At this point, the overarching goal of the specification is to provide a single number summarizing the image quality of the cameraphone that could be placed on a package or online, a so-called "five-star rating". IEEE executives said that the standard reflects reality: most consumers have turned toward their phones to take the pictures that a few years ago would have been shot with a digital camera. The problem, they added, is that while consumers have a wealth of information to assess the merits of high-end DSLRs, few mobile-phone reviews bother with the digital camera portion itself.

"As consumers, we all try, with our limits of time and knowledge, to make a good choice: what is the best phone for my use?" said Edward Rashba, director of new business ventures for the IEEE. "I really have no indication what the image will be like other than the [number of] megapixels."

The group is just being formed, Rashba said, so a roster of companies which will be involved in the project has yet to be finalized. George John, a principal program manager with Microsoft, will serve as the ad-interim chair. Companies that were involved with the I3A effort included AMD, Aptina Imaging, DxO, Eastman Kodak, HP, Motorola, Nokia, Nvidia, Sensata, Sony Ericcsson, Sprint, TI, and Verizon.

What will the IEEE test?

Based on comments by Rashba, the IEEE appears ready to measure many of the same attributes that the I3A pursued: texture blur from noise smoothing, luminance uniformity across an image field, signal to noise and dynamic range, color consistency and white balance, sensitivity, exposure, and tone reproduction, blemishes and artifacts, and veiling glare and stray light.

Rashba said that a combination of subjective and objective metrics would be used, administered by an approved third-party testing lab. The IPA's subjective testing procedures called for the development of "just noticeable differences," or JNDs, described as equivalent steps of perceived quality that are independent of the type of artifact or degradation being measured.

The scores from the individual metrics could be made available, and Rashba suggested the use of profiles, such as an "action profile," which would measure the camera's ability to capture images of objects in motion. A video quotient, to measure the camera's ability to capture streaming video, is also a possibility, said Alpesh Shah, the director of business strategy and analytics for the IEEE.

Will consumers adopt a single metric for image quality, with reviews sites like DPReview using dozens of example shots and metrics to assess higher-end cameras?

"With regards to the so-called 'five star' [summary] rating, people are free to make their own decisions," Shah said.

In other IEEE news, the IEEE 802.11 definition was expanded on Monday to "roll up" the most recent additions to the specification since the IEEE 802.11-2007 revision. More commonly known as "Wi-Fi," the new 802.11-2012 definition folds in well-known enhancements to the specification, such as 802.11n.

All the new definition does is add most recent additions to the specification; it will not affect consumer products at all.

In all, ten amendments have been added to the umbrella 802.11 specification, according to Bruce Kraemer, chair of the IEEE 802.11 working group: 802.11k, 11z, 11r, 11y, 11p, 11w, 11s, 11u, 11v, and 11n. These minor additions to the specification include enhancements to direct-link setup, "fast roam," radio resource measurement, operation in the 3,650-3,700-MHz band, vehicular environments, mesh networking, security, broadcast/multicast and unicast data delivery, interworking with external networks and network management.

About the Author

Mark Hachman Mark joined ExtremeTech in 2001 as the news editor, after rival CMP/United Media decided at the time that online news did not make sense in the new millennium.
Mark stumbled into his career after discovering that writing the great American novel did not pay a monthly salary, and that his other possible career choice, physics, require... See Full Bio

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